During week 9 the class was presented with the task of determining which two protagonists within Mary Shelly's Frankenstein shared the most similarities. While many of the students admitted to witnessing similarities between both Victor and Walton and Victor and his creation, it was apparent that more students saw parallels between Victor and his creation.
The most common connection drawn between Victor and his creation would be the alienation that each are forced to endure. A number of students discussed how both Victor and the monster find themselves alienated. The monster mainly due to his appearance and the way he is received by society and Victor because of the revenge enacted by his creation along with his quest for knowledge to achieve his goal. The desire for knowledge is another similarity, which both Victor and his creation share. As Madelyn noted Victor's thirst for knowledge leads him to read more books and attend college, while the creature simply wants to learn to speak and read so that they could have a chance at a normal existence. However, as was noted numerous times within the discussion board neither's attempt to gain knowledge goes as planned.
Brandon brought up the role of a God complex which can be seen within both Victor and his monster as he stated, "both Victor and his monster play the role of God. God is prevalent in the story and the idea of creation and death lies heavily in the context of the story, Victor creates and his monster destroys." Victor's appetite for knowledge leads him to play the role of God, a role for which he was clearly unprepared. While the creatures attempt to gain knowledge and thus become more "normal" falls short and leads him to seeking revenge by taking the lives of the people Victor loved. The notion of revenge is another similarity that was addressed by a number students. Jeffery noted that there is almost a "like father, like son" quality between the two in that each is disgusted by the nature of the creature and each seeks to blame/take out revenge on the other. However, while both Victor and the creature place blame on each other for the position they are in, they each also experience a great deal of self loathing. As Narin mentioned, "Victor has to live with guilt knowing that he's created his abomination that took away two people that he held dear to him. The monster can never be happy because he he will never be loved and accepted as part of society due to the nature of what he is." Overall there were many overlaps among the connections people drew between Victor and the creature with 11 out of the 18 posts agreeing these two shared more similarities than Victor and Walton.